Sewing and lawn games—I don’t think I’ve put those two thoughts in the same sentence before! Today, learn how to sew your own bean bags or corn bags, then play cornhole, tailgate, bean bag toss, doghouse, Baggo, or, whew, just plain bags. This is a perfect afternoon sewing project to create with kids. Then, go have some backyard fun.

How to Sew Bean Bags for Cornhole or Bean Bag Toss

Using the following instructions, you’ll be able to create regulation-size bags as set by the American Cornhole Organization. If you’re going to play the game, you better be official!

Note from Nancy: If you opt to use novelty print cotton fabrics for your bean bags, perhaps to align with your favorite sports teams, you’ll want to underline the cotton squares with duck canvas for durability.

The random winner of a package of Fuse ‘n Gather from Clover is LuLu. She said: I have always used the 2 rows of regular stitching—pulling the threads to make my gathers look good! I would like to try Fuse ‘n Gather!

9 Comments

Great idea! I think I will embroider something them on with my machine.
Thank you for all the great ideas that you post.

Judy GJuly 21, 2015

I have your “Sewing A to Z” book in my home library. Looks like I need to add ” The Absolute Easiest Way to Sew” book, also. Thank you, Nancy, for all your years of patient guidance!

MartyJuly 21, 2015

Unbelievable: I was just saying to my son that I’d make some bags for him to have a set for tailgate fun, and I hadn’t even thought through the ‘how-to’ when you post these instructions. Thanks for making it “sew easy” for me!

Bertie SJuly 21, 2015

My grandson made a corn toss board in his school color, black and orange, Okla State U, I offered to make the corn bags but he didn’t think I could make them strong enough, so they ordered them online, I patch his jeans all the time, I should be able to make corn bags!!! His mother thinks I have enough to do.
Nancy, hope you are healing and progressing in your recovery. I have most of your Sewing with Nancy programs recorded. Thank you for all your sewing help and ideas.

peacefulJuly 21, 2015

When I was in nursing school my friend and I (and her father) made a bean bag toss for the pediatric unit we were on. We painted a picture of a nurse on the board and called her Miss Nurse. Then we sewed the bean bags by hand – no machine in the dorm. Fun game for kids and good for coordination skills.

Karen PattersonJuly 21, 2015

Hi Nancy!

Thank you so much for the instructions on making these! We plan to have our niece and nephew from Ohio come stay with us a few weeks in August and I have been teaching them to sew. This will be great fun for them to make and enjoy playing with while they are here and I’m sure they will want a set for home! Thanks so much! I love all your books, they have such good instruction. I just received one titled “Hot and Handy Projects” and I look forward to making things for the kitchen from it, along with lots of gifts for friends! I love all your books and hope I win “The Absolute Easiest Way To Sew” so not only I can learn but our nieces and nephews, neighbor girls and friends at church can too! My sewing room is very busy needless to say!
Love,
Karen

MarjorieJuly 21, 2015

I love your wrapped corner technique and use it anytime I need to see a corner…much nicer results than sewing the corner like so many patterns suggest.

Ronda HalvorsenJuly 21, 2015

Top of the morning to you Nancy! Hope your healing is going well and am so very excited for the new episodes in August!

Here is my cornhole experience. My son-shine and daugter-in-law’s wedding was a beautiful homespun creation.
I sewed several I think 30 or so bags for their multiple cornhole games at the reception.

I sure wish I would have had this tute as I thought simply serging them would suffice, WRONG! On the test run several of the bags burst. You really need a good tight stitch to stand up to the use these bags will take! I am going to post this on my son’s FB page and am quite sure will be sewing new ones! Thanks so very much for all you do!